Cloud contact centers connect agents with customers across multiple channels, including voice, email, SMS, social media, live chat, and more. Cloud contact center platform API management plays a critical role in maintaining all of these channels.
Unlike traditional on-premises phone systems and hosted contact center solutions, cloud contact centers aren’t bound by physical locations or servers. Instead, all of your reps can access the software they need from anywhere via a computer, smartphone, or other VoIP-enabled device.
When implemented and managed correctly, APIs improve customer personalization, ensure agents have anytime access, boost agent productivity, and deliver real-time data for improved analytics.
Cloud contact center APIs ultimately unify communication channels with other business-critical tools. This allows you to provide better support through custom applications so you can future-proof your contact center at scale.
Overview of API management in cloud contact centers
APIs connect two or more applications, expanding the functionality of one or both of the systems. In many cases, an API passes data from one program to another or embeds functionality of one application into the other.
In terms of cloud contact centers, APIs extend communication methods into other pieces of software. For example, you can add calling capabilities within Microsoft Teams.
You can also use APIs to enable inbound and outbound texting, chat, and calling directly within your CRM. This integration gives agents the ability to communicate without switching back and forth between solutions. It also means agents can see caller information while they’re talking to them.
It can work the other way too — you can pull CRM data into your VoIP solution, allowing agents to see critical details about the caller before they answer.
APIs are commonly used to automate outbound text or email reminders for things like upcoming appointments, balances due, and order status updates via rules-based triggers and custom settings.
Another popular way cloud contact centers use APIs is to centralize social media communication. You integrate various platforms into a single solution so your agents can manage all inbound messages from Facebook, X, Instagram, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, and more without having to navigate to each platform.
With API access, modern contact centers can truly customize the way agents interact with customers and each other.
SEE: Learn how to use APIs, the different types of APIs, and all about API security.
Strategies for the cloud contact center platform API management cycle
Cloud contact center APIs are not plug-and-play, one-click setups that you can configure once and move on. They require ongoing developer support and IT resources for deployment and regular maintenance.
Think about the resources you’d need to build and maintain any other type of software, like a mobile app or web application.
The same applies here because you’re essentially creating custom software that requires ongoing attention.
It’s particularly important for you because disruptions or outages will have immediate consequences to many people on your team, or even your customers. If agents are no longer able to receive calls in Salesforce, for example, everything will come to a grinding halt until it’s fixed.
The following cloud contact center platform API management strategies can help you avoid these problems and ensure everything runs as smoothly as possible.
Development
Before anything else, you’ll need to define the scope of your project and get a team of developers to help you accomplish your goals.
Large organizations setting up complex integrations may need multiple developers working on this together. It should be treated like any other software development project run by a project manager with sprint planning and other agile project management practices.
Your developers will likely need to use documentation provided by each piece of software you want to connect.
They typically provide developer guides that explain exactly what you can do with their APIs and how to do it. They may even provide sample code for your team to start with, plus resources for various programming languages (JavaScript, Java, Python, PHP, C#, Ruby, etc.).
The best vendors also provide a complete SDK (software development kit) that contains more than basic instructions. These include a full collection of tools, libraries, and documentation to simplify the development process. SDKs ultimately make it easier for your team to access and utilize the API for whatever specific functionality you’re looking for.
SEE: Check out the best API management tools to manage APIs at scale.
Testing
Next, you need to ensure that the API works as intended. To do this, you’ll run various API calls to verify everything. You should also test more complex scenarios and situations in which the API should fail to validate that it works.
For example, you might have an agent answer a call from your CRM, send a text message, and set up an automated text reminder.
You can also test out more complicated workflows like real-time escalations to a manager, call transfers, handling duplicate contacts, screen pop, and more.
Beyond functionality, you’ll also need to test performance. At this stage, you should simulate high call volumes to ensure your setup can handle peak traffic. Many APIs have per-minute, per-hour, or simultaneous limits you have to comply with — this is often overlooked and can have frustrating consequences.
If something isn’t working properly or your team finds bugs, they should be fixed before you roll out the new solution to your entire team.
SEE: Learn about common API issues and how to fix them.
Deployment
If everything’s good to go, you can roll it out. Depending on the complexity, this can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours.
Even if you think it’s going to be a relatively quick deployment, I suggest doing this when most of your team won’t be using either piece of software. If you can’t avoid that, try to choose a timeline that’s historically low volume.
You can look back at historical data to determine specific days of the week and times you have the lowest usage. It’ll likely be in the middle of the night, on a weekend, or on a holiday.
Ideally, issues should have been resolved during the testing phase. But things don’t always go according to plan. Leave yourself plenty of wiggle room to identify and fix problems that arise before your team starts using it.
Monitoring
API monitoring should happen 24/7 whenever possible.
Developers and quality assurance agents can do this using third-party tools to gather data and analyze performance in real time. These are built to track different metrics, like API response time, error rate, availability, downtime, and more.
You can also set up automated alerts and ask your team or customers to let you know as soon as they spot something that isn’t working as intended.
Automatic alerts can help you stay ahead of potential problems before they start interfering with communication, so they should be your first line of defense.
Versioning
It’s important to track and manage changes to your cloud contact center APIs over time. There are several benefits of doing so, but the most common for contact centers is backward compatibility.
Cloud-based software can update at any time, and these updates can cause major problems with your APIs.
When updates happen, it’s important for your APIs to continue functioning as best as possible until you can resolve any unforeseen issues.
Versioning also helps your development team work on new features without affecting the version your agents and customers are actively using. It lets you test and make sure everything’s working without impacting anyone else.
Developers can release a beta or V1 so your team has something to work with while they focus on rolling out more features and putting together a more robust solution.
Check out our guide on versioning best practices to learn more.
